1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet recording device and an ink supplying method in the device, and a main object of the invention is to stabilize color reproducibility of an output image.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a conventional ink jet recording device, there is a device of a so-called serial scanning system in which a recording head as recording means and an ink tank as an ink container are exchangeably mounted on a carriage movable in a main scanning direction. In this recording system, images are sequentially recorded on a recording medium by repeating the main scanning of the carriage on which the recording head and the ink tank are mounted, and the sub-scanning (conveying) of the recording medium.
If consideration is given to realization of a microprinter suited for personal digital assistants (PDA), cameras or the like by using such serial scanning recording system, an ink volume of the ink tank mounted on the carriage must be set extremely small since a size of the carriage itself becomes small. However, if a capacity of the ink tank on the carriage is extremely small, there is a possibility that replacement of the ink tank will become frequent or the ink tank will have to be replaced during a recording operation.
Thus, in order to solve such a problem, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-334982 presents a device of an ink supplying system (referred to as a pit-in ink supplying system for convenience hereinafter) which replenishes an ink tank (referred to as a subtank hereinafter) on a carriage with an ink from an ink containing member (referred to as a main tank hereinafter: the main tank is generally much larger than the ink tank on the carriage) disposed separately from the carriage at proper timing each time the carriage is moved to a predetermined standby position.
According to the disclosed device, for example, for each printing on one recording medium, the carriage is moved to the predetermined standby position to connect the subtank on the carriage with the main tank by a joint member at proper timing, and the subtank is replenished with the ink from the main tank in the connected state. Thus, it is possible to solve the aforementioned problem caused by the extremely small ink volume of the subtank on the carriage.